


o but what of that place -

by daekie



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Character Death In Dream, Depersonalization, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Seeking Mr Eaten's Name (Fallen London), mention of Seeker/Mr Eaten (probably unrequited?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daekie/pseuds/daekie
Summary: “Do you remember,“ the Northridden Hunter asks, conversationally, “the Festival, years ago?"(Remembering: a sacrifice, voluntary, and someone-something who was sacrificed even before.)
Kudos: 10





	o but what of that place -

“Do you remember,“ the Northridden Hunter asks, conversationally, “the Festival, years ago?“

They’re sitting on some shore or another, black sand milling with the waves; it clumps between their fingers as they draw furrows through it, absentmindedly carving out shapes that aren’t quite what they could be, sometimes listening to the quiet _sputter-hiss_ of sparkfires immediately drowned out by the sea. They're staring up at the stars, hair tied back with blood-red satin ribbon; their hands are still wet.

Their companion makes a quiet noise - they’ll take it as assent, whether it is or not. It's not relevant, anyways, and it doesn't matter. This is something that needs to be said, no matter how gentle the Hunter pretends at being. Of course - back when the Festival happened, they weren't the Hunter yet, not _really_ ; but the memories still sit there quiet in the dark.

“Garlands n’ ribbons,“ they continue, as close to wistful as they can get when they think about a time where things were _simple_ , “and the dancing, right? 'nd the Drownies - and then I’d come back home, and taken the secrets and stories, and turned around to catch a place-that-wasn’t. Halfway into my dreams, ‘course, since when you want something that isn’t real you can’t be anywhere real either. Remember the crossroads at midnight?“

Another quiet noise. There are warm fingers pressed over theirs, almost intimate, but they only have eyes for above.

“Do you remember what I gave up?“

… Silence. It’s heartening. (Who could? They barely do.)

They had pressed their fingers into the weakspot of the world and _pushed_ , so they could go someplace that wasn’t, feeding it with secrets others had bled out to make it work. To make it allow them this extra leeway. To make it blind as they pulled back its skin to get at its workings, for the first time, and not the last. 

(There is no hope. None.)

(Did they die, brought too high above? Did those rays burn them beyond any belief? Did they wake up again? Did they go back, weeks later, and not remember they’d ever been at all; with no sign they'd ever been there before except the sting of the not-sun, half-familiar and unremembered, in someone else's dream someday?) 

“It was love. Always is.“ They’ve never felt the sort of love the Bazaar wants to make its’ tragedies from, take its’ taxes on; it’s no fault of theirs, not when they can look at things like this and think about how foolish everyone was – how many years later? Do they recall being asked, to share, to complete? Do they remember being betrayed? The flensing? Every reflection had been different; one Surface-skinny with dirt across their face and bloody knuckles, one in a hell-red corset with brass around their throat and a honey-mazed expression, one in gauzy silks with a distant expression with water roaring up behind them, one desperately pressing hands at the glass and fighting soundlessly to get _out_ to _leave, god, help me, I don’t want to die here_ \- they’d looked away by choice from the inevitabilities of those other worlds, and seen someone else entirely. Lady of the crossroads. Someone had to adjudicate these things, less they be broken-wild, if they’d all rather we not sink our teeth in the wings of death with gutter-glass eyes. 

_Look to love, always._

Nobody had recognized them in the streets except to shrink away, when they’d come back, when they'd awoken. All forgotten. All forgotten. Just like him. 

(They’d built it back up, and a few had stayed still - but the Epicene hadn’t recognized them for half-a-second, and they hadn’t liked her glassed-over eyes as she tried to remember. The Detective had bitten off a word halfway through a sentence because he couldn’t find their name ready in his mouth. They had looked in the mirror and not recognized their own face for seven long seconds, as if it was the reflection of someone else's body; too pale, too flat, and not enough teeth.)

“Do you remember -”

The hand laid on theirs is searing hot, like a housefire under the skin, possessed of a sort of manic unhappiness. They can’t turn their head to look, but they can feel the desperate fever on their skin as their companion pulls at them, pressing them down into the sand; they’re wide-eyed, tears on their face, desperate-skinny with hazel-green matching eyes and short brown hair (knife-cut, unwieldy, unbalanced; prone to matting towards the back), and was that so many years ago still? Were they so young, then? They must have been. But they don’t remember it the way it was anymore. Too much has been lost for that person to be anything more than a half-forgotten memory, only ever real in scenes like this one.

The sand is cold, under them, but it yields like air anyways; they are falling, ungrounded, breathless, towards well-brick and eyes and teeth in the water.

Their mouth is moving, but there’s no sound but his screaming.

_“Do you recall - “  
_

The Hunter wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this in late 2018, never posted it here, finally got around to ao3 crosspost! slightly edited to replace character's name with their epithet + minor grammar changes + general expansion (original was 641 words).


End file.
